READ THE CASE STUDY AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW

Oupucon Crisis Oupucon is a global engineering company that provides engineering, management and specialist technical services for public and private sector clients globally. With an office network extending across 40 countries, Oupucon has been involved in projects in over 60 countries across Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas and employs around 12,000 people throughout 16 industry groups. Oupucon has a client centric business model that gives them the ability to deliver a full range of services globally. They aim to create best teams for their key clients, develop strong client relationships and deliver market leading solutions.

Their clients benefit from their collaborative business model as it nurtures the development of market leading expertise across their industries. Their most prized department is the marine engineering team. They design, construct and consult on the building of marine structures i.e. ports and harbours.Their main office is located in Johannesburg and recently Oupucon has experienced a major setback. The leadership team of the marine engineering department resigned with immediate effect and have now started their own business.

This means the marine team is now functioning without its unit director, two senior managers, and one design manager. There are now only three consultants of senior and junior level left in the team. This leaves a huge gap that needs to be filled. To solve the issue they have decided to merge the Johannesburg and Cape Town team to fill the gaps in the leadership team. Both teams were small and the merge will not result in any job losses. However, the new unit director from Cape Town has recognised that there is skills gap that needs to be filled and some team members will need to be upskilled to be able to complete other duties and tasks.

QUESTION

1.2. The responsibility of the training and development manager is to manage the training and development function in such a way that achieves the set objectives. Describe the term management and provide an analysis of the importance of planning within training (10)MARKS